The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

  With rising feelings of panic, dread, and anger surging through his body, producing a strength he didn’t know he was capable of, Harry rowed and rowed with the strength of ten men, determined not to die in the suction from the ship, determined not to die now that they had got so close to safety.

  In the lifeboat, the minutes passed slowly. Time seemed suspended.

  The iceberg loomed like a ghost from the jet-black water, reaching up almost as high as Titanic’s funnels. Maggie had never seen an iceberg before. She gazed at it now dully, barely registering the continual slapping noise of the water against the edges of its great gray bulk.

  Gazing mechanically around the lifeboat at her fellow passengers, she recognized the Irish man with the uilleann pipes and wondered for a moment how he had managed to get into the boat before noticing another man, huddled at the back of the boat under a woman’s coat. She thought of Michael Kelly, who had been refused a seat, and noticed then the space to her right and left, ample room for a young boy to sit. In fact, as she looked about the boat she saw space for all fourteen of the Ballysheen group to have had seats. It was a thought that angered her, until her attention was caught by the shrill cry of a baby. The bawling was coming from an old sack, the baby swaddled inside.

  “She was too small,” the mother said, noting Maggie’s gaze. “They had to lift her down to me in the sack. My husband is still out there,” she sobbed, rocking the infant in her arms, shushing and soothing it and letting her tears fall.

  Maggie saw other mothers clasping their children to them to try to give them some extra warmth; older women staring blankly into the distance; and several ladies, still dressed in their finest silk evening gowns, their fur stoles and fancy hats offering meager protection against the icy air.

  She thought she recognized a dignified-looking lady with a fur coat around her shoulders. She was clutching a small dog, soothing its frightened whimpers as if it were a child. Despite her almost catatonic state, Maggie was struck by how completely unjust it was that babies and children were drowning in the sea while a small dog was here, sailing to safety. It was just one of the many injustices she would feel about the whole tragedy at that moment and for many, many years to come. She shook uncontrollably with the cold and fear and pulled the emergency blanket tighter around her shoulders, knowing that in a few more moments she would have to pass it to someone else to get a short burst of protection against the bitter night air.

  All around them other lifeboats moved slowly away from Titanic’s bulk. The sound of the oars slapping against the water and the moaning and sobbing from the occupants seeming to fill the spaces between them all, the mist of their frozen breaths rising up, up into the blank nothingness above.

  Straight ahead, Titanic sank lower and lower, the thousands of electric lights casting a dazzling glow onto the still, calm ocean, adding a brilliant illumination to the tragic scene of people thrashing desperately in the freezing water. Unable to comprehend what she was seeing, Maggie closed her eyes.

  With her eyes shut and her body numbed with the cold, her ears took on a heightened awareness. Amid the perfect melody from the violinists who were still playing on the upper decks, she heard, with chilling clarity, the terrifying orchestra of a thousand people dying, heard their haunting shouts and screams. She could bear it no longer and placed her hands over her ears and buried her head deep into her lap. She shivered uncontrollably, but she didn’t shed any tears. Her body and mind were shocked beyond the ability to weep.

  Fifty minutes had passed since she’d left the ship.

  It felt like a lifetime.

  They were farther away from Titanic now. Her bow was slipping deeper and deeper into the water, until only the foremast was visible.

  Maggie opened her eyes and watched as the stern of the ship soared higher and higher above the water, the massive propellers looming out of the blackness. Despite their distance, the reality of the horror was still audible to her frozen ears.

  Listening to the human screams and the crunching and grinding of metal, Maggie retreated into herself. The faces of those she had encountered on this journey flashed across her mind: the boiler man hiding among the mailbags at Queenstown, the girl with the rash who was so brokenhearted to be turned away at the health inspection line. Maggie had thought it a shame at the time that these people wouldn’t share the experience of sailing across the Atlantic on this breathtaking ship. Now it seemed that God had had a mind for those people and had spared them, as he had spared her.

  Unable to find a way to respond to what was happening, Maggie wondered about the lady traveling on her own with the seven children, about Elsie and her family traveling from Wiltshire, about the honeymooning couples they had met, the little boy she had watched playing with the spinning top, the Marconi boy Harry had asked to send her message, the ladies she had watched taking afternoon tea in their fine silk dresses. She saw every one of their faces in her mind now and wondered what their fates were, wondered whether they were out here on the sea with her or screaming in terror on the sinking ship. She could not even begin to think about those she had traveled with, her aunt and cousin, the friends she regarded as brothers and sisters. She tried desperately to block their panic-stricken faces from her numbed mind as she rocked back and forth, cradling her shivering knees.

  “Good Lord,” one woman gasped as a dreadful rumbling roar came from the ship, which appeared to snap in two, the bow disappearing into the ocean as the majestic funnels ripped from their fixtures, crashing onto the decks and all who stood on them. “May God have mercy on their souls.”

  Another woman led the group in prayer while the scraping and crunching of steel filled the air around them. Maggie peered through the icy air as the brilliant lights of Titanic finally flickered and went out.

  Despite the enveloping blackness, the remaining bulk of Titanic was just visible as an eerie silhouette against the starlit sky. For a few brief moments the stern reared up, perfectly perpendicular, before plunging, with a peculiar gracefulness, into the icy waters.

  “She’s gone,” somebody gasped. “God bless us and save us all. She’s gone.”

  Maggie felt strangely calm. It was as if she were in someone else’s dream, almost unable to believe that this was actually happening to her, unable to believe that she had just seen Titanic disappear into the sea.

  The bitter cold of the Atlantic night seeped through her body, her uncontrollable shaking her only conscious sensation.

  The night engulfed them. Time seemed endless.

  With the lights from Titanic gone, they were plunged into total darkness. For a while, the frantic thrashing of a thousand people in the water and their desperate cries for help continued, but eventually they faded and stopped.

  Silence.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, Maggie saw blurred images of icebergs around her, was vaguely aware of the ominous creaking coming from them. She had waking dreams that the ice was alive, silently, menacingly creeping toward their tiny lifeboat, ready to consume it and all who sat in it. She screamed in terror. A man placed his arm around her.

  Images flashed across her salt-filled eyes: other lifeboats bobbing around in the water, frozen bodies, blue faces.

  Sensations came and went.

  She took off her coat to give to a young child whose lips were blue from the cold. The mother wept with thanks.

  “I have two coats,” she heard a well-spoken American lady say. “Give the girl this one. It will give her some warmth at least.” She had a sensation then of a heavy, dry coat being placed around her. She heard a dog bark next to her and the same lady shushing it. “Be quiet, Edmund. We can give the girl a coat, can’t we?”

  She tried to say thank you, but no words would come from her mouth.

  She heard people talking about paper to burn for light so the rescue ships would be able to see them; heard them searching in their pockets, looking for letters or other scraps of paper. For some reason Maggie thought she had some letters
in her coat pocket, but her hands couldn’t feel them. She assumed she must have dreamed it.

  Babies crying, mothers comforting them, women comforting the mothers and wives who wailed for their sons and husbands who had been left behind.

  The pale light of dawn streaking across the sky.

  The sensation of a small case, clasped in her hand.

  She closed her eyes.

  Time stood still. There was nothing.

  “I’m so cold,” someone said.

  The sound of prayers and sobbing.

  It was hard to breathe.

  Another voice. “A ship.”

  She was being lifted then, pulled. Her frozen hands tried to grasp a rope. A ladder? Was she back on Titanic? Was it a dream?

  Her body wouldn’t move. She had no idea where she was. Where was Aunt Kathleen? Where was everyone?

  “She had this small case with her,” someone said. “Irish, I think.”

  A bitter taste in her mouth. Hot coffee? Then brandy. Coughing. Spluttering.

  She tried to open her eyes, but they were too sore from the salt and the cold.

  She tried to speak. “I can’t see. Am I blind?” The words came out as an indecipherable mumble.

  “It’s all right now, miss,” someone replied. “You’re on Carpathia. It came to rescue us. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe now.”

  A blanket was wrapped around her. She let the tears fall.

  For the next two days, Maggie barely noticed the sunset or sunrise, barely acknowledged the faint shafts of early morning light that reflected off a piece of metal through the window in front of her, sending light dancing across the deck. She stared dimly ahead, the sun almost irrelevant to her, unable to warm her, unable to illuminate the shadows of thirteen people that clouded her broken heart.

  “Where am I?” she asked a woman lying next to her.

  “The library,” she replied. “There wasn’t room for us all in the cabins, and those of us who were last to be rescued were placed in makeshift dorms, like this one.”

  “What ship are we on?” Maggie inquired, still confused.

  “The Carpathia. They came to rescue us. Remember?”

  She didn’t.

  “Are you alone, miss? Was there anyone traveling with you?”

  “The others are all gone,” she whispered. “All of them.”

  RMS Carpathia

  April 17, 1912

  It wasn’t until late in the afternoon of the second day on Carpathia that Maggie found enough strength to sit on the deck. She was still shaking under her blankets, and a kind man with blue eyes, who said he was the doctor, told her that she wasn’t cold anymore but the shock of what she had been through had her nerves bouncing all over the place. She was unable to cry any more tears. All she could feel was fear and a desolate loneliness.

  On the doctor’s advice, she tried to think of comforting thoughts, thoughts of home. She thought of Séamus, picturing his soft eyes, hearing his gentle voice, feeling his warm embrace. She recalled their first tender kiss on the shore of the lake and how her stomach had felt it was doing cartwheels with the joy she’d felt.

  She reflected on the journey she had taken from Ballysheen. She was almost able to hear the rumble of the traps as they’d set off, before a sort of stillness had fallen over them as the rutted tracks gave way to the softer sandy road at the edge of the village. She remembered how she’d watched the three traps ahead of the one she shared with her aunt and how she had wondered what thoughts were passing through all their minds as they moved slowly across the landscape that had framed their whole lives.

  She recalled how she had watched Peggy, in the trap ahead, speaking some words of comfort to Katie, who was twisting a sodden handkerchief around and around her fingers. She remembered that they had stopped once for a driver to remove a stone that had become lodged in a horse’s hoof. She remembered how she had tried so hard to blink back her tears as they passed the familiar sights, afraid that her aunt would be annoyed with her for showing such sadness at leaving.

  She’d watched the homes of her friends and neighbors pass by, imagining the black iron pots hanging on the cranes over the fires, the bread already baking. She’d wanted to remember it all: the dances, the wakes, a shared joke with a neighbor, every heady scent of the gorse and heather, every tree, every stone wall, every field. She remembered how she had hoped that if she stared intently enough, listened hard enough, and really concentrated on those sights and sounds and smells, she would impress the memories into her brain, ready to recall at will in the years to come, as the vast ocean and the passing of time attempted to erode them.

  It was these small, intimate details she thought of now as she sat, shaking and alone, although whether she remembered this in her dreams or in waking moments she wasn’t quite sure.

  “We arrive in New York tomorrow evening,” she heard someone close by say. “And not a moment too soon. This ice is wreaking havoc with the minds of the poor unfortunates. They must be terrified it’s going to happen all over again.”

  “Well, I commend the bravery of Captain Rostron,” the man’s colleague replied. “There aren’t many men who would have acted as swiftly and calmly as he did, and then set a course directly through the ice fields to get us back as quickly as possible. Nerves of steel he must have—or a sixth sense.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” she whispered.

  The man heard her and turned. “Yes, miss?”

  “What day is it today?”

  “It is Wednesday, miss. April seventeenth.”

  “Wednesday,” she repeated. “Thank you.”

  She closed her eyes then and slept, dreaming of cherry blossom trees and Séamus, waiting for her.

  PART FIVE

  Marconigram message sent from Philip Curry, manager of the White Star Line offices in Southampton, to W.W. Bradfield, Marconi Telegraph Company, London, on April 18, 1912

  CHAPTER 29

  Cass County, Illinois

  May 25, 1982

  Grace, there’s a man on the phone says he’d like to talk to you.”

  “Oh, Mom, can you do me a favor and tell him I’m out?” Grace shouted from her bedroom. “It’ll just be another reporter looking to get their pound of flesh out of Maggie.”

  The interest in Grace’s article about Maggie’s Titanic story had been amazing. Since she’d received the phone call from Professor Andrews to tell her that Bill O’Shea had fallen in love with her article, life had become crazy. When the piece finally appeared in print, Grace’s and Maggie’s names were all over town. Grace was being hailed as the young girl who’d scooped the biggest story of the year and was already being touted as one to watch for the sensitive and heartfelt way she had handled the story. Maggie was a local hero.

  With the success of the article and the revelation that a Titanic survivor was living among them, other local newspapers and journalists wanted a piece of the action, and the phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Everyone wanted to cover the story in their own newspapers and magazines, wanted photos of Maggie, photos of Grace, photos of the family together. There had even been a piece in a local paper about Grace and how her studies had been put on hold when her father died. It was all becoming a bit intrusive, and Grace was hesitant to talk to anyone else—wary of their intentions.

  “He says it’s very important,” her mother shouted back up the stairs. “He says he’s honestly not a reporter and that you will definitely be interested in what he has to say.”

  Not believing a word of it, Grace put down the admissions form she was completing—necessary, if tedious, paperwork for getting herself reenrolled in the journalism program—and walked casually downstairs. Sighing and rolling her eyes, she took the receiver from her mother, who mouthed “He seems very nice” before wandering back into the kitchen to finish washing the breakfast dishes.

  “Hello. This is Grace Butler,” she announced without interest into the receiver. “How can I help you?”

  “Miss Butler.
Oh, um, hello. Thank you so much for taking my call.” The voice on the end of the line was a man’s voice, well spoken, if slightly nervous. “Um, Miss Butler, I’m afraid this is all going to sound a little strange, but I would appreciate it if you would hear me out.”

  Grace warmed a little to the pleasant, polite voice and sat down on the bottom step, tracing the pattern on the carpet with her bare toes as she admired the neon-pink nail polish she’d applied earlier that morning. “Okay,” she said, distracted. “I’m listening.”

  “My name is Edward Lockey. I read your article in the paper last week. It’s a remarkable story and beautifully written, might I add. Your great-grandmother is an incredibly brave woman.”

  Grace was used to hearing this from the dozens of reporters who had called over the last week. She gave her usual response. “Yes, thank you. She is an amazing lady indeed.”

  “Well, it turns out to be quite a coincidence that I read your article. I don’t usually read the Tribune you see, I’m more of a Sun Times man, but I was with my sister last week and she always gets the Tribune and . . . oh well, look, that doesn’t really matter now. Basically, Miss Butler, I think I may have something that will be of interest to your great-grandmother. You see, an uncle of mine was also on Titanic.”

  Grace sat up then, her attention caught. “Really? Oh my gosh!”

  “Yes. He was a third-class saloon steward on the ship,” he continued. “He sailed from Southampton in England.” Grace felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as goose bumps formed all over her arms. “He sadly passed away a few years ago, but when he died, a few of his personal possessions were given to me. I’d never really paid much attention to them before, but then I read your article and something clicked.”

  Completely captivated now by this quietly spoken man and his connection to Titanic, Grace wanted to know more. “What?” she asked. “What clicked?”